


Bittersweet Is The Taste of Vengeance

by quicksilver_nightsky



Series: Prince, Shield, Chamberlain and Delicium [3]
Category: Final Fantasy XV
Genre: Bad Decisions, Betrayal, Consensual Underage Sex, M/M, Pre-Brotherhood Era, They’re Seventeen and Eighteen which is legal for me but tagging in case, Virginity
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-14
Updated: 2018-12-14
Packaged: 2019-09-18 02:16:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Underage
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,936
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16986234
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/quicksilver_nightsky/pseuds/quicksilver_nightsky
Summary: In the questionable wisdom of late teens, he had decided the best revenge was to take something from the crown prince and keep it for himself.And that was how, at the precocious age of sixteen, Ignis Scientia decided he was going to have Gladiolus Amicitia.





	Bittersweet Is The Taste of Vengeance

**Author's Note:**

> Ever wonder what was going on between Gladio and Iggy in Delicium? Now you don’t have to!

Despite Ignis Scientia’s unceasing dedication to the crown, and his prince, he was not always so stalwart. Like many people, he had a teenage rebellion. At sixteen, dealing with a bratty, early pubescent Prince Noctis who lashed out at everything good in his life for what he was missing. 

(With the wisdom of age and hindsight, Ignis knew that Noct’s behaviour was the result of hormonal fluxes, the pressures of royalty and duty, and a severe lack of genuine friends. As for his own part… Well.)

Teenage Ignis — freshly graduated from university and in full time service of his highness — decided he was tired of giving his all to the crown prince and receiving nothing but attitude in return. In the questionable wisdom of late teens, he had decided the best course of action was to take something from the crown prince and keep it for himself.

And that was how, at the precocious age of sixteen, Ignis Scientia decided he was going to have Gladiolus Amicitia.

Gladiolus Amicitia, the prize jewel of the Amicitia family — or would that be the prize blossom? At sixteen (just one year older than Ignis himself), he’d been sworn in as the Crown Prince’s official Shield. The Amicitias was a family as old as the Lucis Caelum’s, and they said just as blessed as the royal family themselves. Gladiolus seemed a prime example of this. 

At sixteen, when Ignis was only _just_ leaving the awkward teenage years of unbearable acne, and limbs that were gangly and disproportional, seventeen-year-old Gladiolus had already been a glorious specimen of man. The ratio of his broad span of shoulders and a slender waist was only assisted by musculature that would make the marble statues of Titan himself jealous. He hadn’t yet finished growing, but he stood a full foot taller than Ignis himself. 

The urge to climb him like a tree preceded, and perhaps even contributed to, his decision to own some part of the Shield as his own. Take some part of him away that Noctis Lucis Caelum could never own. Like him, Gladiolus was a sworn member of the three-part revenue that would be the people to assist Noctis so long as he remained crown prince. 

Dr Ignis Stupeo Scientia, PhD Esq, decided that Sir Gladiolus Amicitia’s virginity would do him nicely. 

He was reasonably certain of the intel that the Shield still possessed his. Though the eldest son was an incorrigible flirt and natural charmer, the word about the Citadel’s training gyms was that nobody had bedded him. He certainly tended to prefer the fairer sex, but he had personally seen that charisma turned on some of the more masculine of the Crownsguard recruits. 

Ignis was not so arrogant to think that he had more appeal than the scores of Crownsguards who would gladly tumble their future Captain— nor the other nobles with ranks and family legacies equivalent to the Amicitias’s — but he had one thing in abundance that they did not. Well, two. Patience, mainly, but also _tenacity_. 

It begun tentatively. He had, initially, to allow Gladiolus to be the one who led their dance. Where his charm failed, Ignis would take over. If he took every step perfectly, Sir Gladiolus Amicitia would never know he had choreographed the whole thing. 

He approached Gladiolus, and introduced himself — though they had been officially introduced to one another well before the shield had been sworn in. Gladiolus had been suitably wary, as he had expected, but not standoffish. Ignis proposed that, as they were to form the entirety of the young prince’s retinue until he turned seventeen, they ought to be amicable with one another. 

After precisely three months of thrice-weekly meetings (coffee twice, lunch on a Saturday afternoon), Ignis expressed his concern that his weapons training was lacking. That was phase two: making Gladiolus physically aware of his body. By then he’d done enough cardio training that he had enough muscles on his body that it wouldn’t an embarrassing sight. 

When the flirting stopped, in favour of shyly averted looks and pinked cheeks, Ignis stopped allowing himself to be chased. He began the pursuit. At six months, he claimed Gladio (he was Gladio by then). The night of his seventeenth birthday, he had taken what he had set out to claim. 

And then Gladiolus, gloriously naked in his bed, said three terrifying words. _I love you_.

That he had not accounted for.

In that moment, Ignis understood that he himself was as hopelessly, painfully entangled as he’d tied up the prince’s Shield.

But it didn’t matter, they couldn’t be. Ignis needed all his time to devote himself wholly to Noctis, who had decided to finish middle school but then be moved to private tutoring at his request. Gladiolus Amicitia needed to marry a suitably high born woman and continue on his family line. Ignis was neither nobly born, nor did he possess the correct equipment to provide the necessary heir. 

He watched Gladio sleep for a long moment, curling back into Ignis’s warmth. He could not allow this. His conscience, his prudence, would not allow it. 

He had to end this. He only hoped he could manage it without destroying them both along with their friendship and their working relationship. 

He abandoned Gladio in his bed — and ignored the text later in the morning complaining about his early schedule. And the next asking if he had time for lunch. And had his secretary cancel his training sessions with the Shield — “indefinitely”. 

He continued to ‘dodge his calls’, as the colloquialism stated. It was his hope that Gladio would get the hint, and save them both the painful conversation he would otherwise have to have. 

But Gladio was as stubborn as the Titan his sculpted figure resembled. In the second evening after their night together, he returned to his rooms in the Citadel to find the Shield waiting with a furious scowl. 

(When Noct turned sixteen, in another year’s time, they would all have rooms together in the prince’s suite. But for now, Gladio has _broken in_.)

“I hope you lifted a key, instead of breaking my doorhandle,” he said with disapproval, using a shoehorn to ease his loafers away from his feet. 

“Stole it from Drautos.” He clenched his fists. “The fuck is going on, Igs? You’ve been dodging me since your birthday!”

“I was rather hoping you would catch the hint,” he said, making sure his voice was cool and emotionless. He hung up his jacket and carried his leather case over to the desk. 

“Catch what hint?” Gladio demanded. 

“The hint that I’ve no further use for you,” he responded, sitting down at the desk and taking out some paperwork he didn’t need to do. 

There was a stunned silence. Then Gladio spoke, his voice rough with disbelief: “you’re breaking up with me?”

“One needs to be in a relationship to break up,” Ignis replied, carefully unscrewing his fountain pen. “If there was nothing else?”

“Igs… _Ignis,_ ” Gladio said — his voice a desperate plea — “what are you talking about? I don’t understand.”

Then Ignis would make him.

He confessed then, as cold and indifferent as all his life had taught him how to be, his ill intentions, the petty vengeance that had led to ensnaring the heart he didn’t deserve to possess. (That spite against the prince he had long since forgiven had led to this.) He spoke it aloud. Not once turning to look at the Shield, as if the whole business was beneath his notice. 

Gladiolus had been unbelievably hurt. There was not the shouting he predicted. Instead his voice was low, calm, and utterly devoid of any kind of inflection. “You fucked me because you’re pissed at Noct for being a teenager.”

“Quite.”

“Get out,” Gladio demanded. 

“This is my apartment, Gladiolus. It is your responsibility to vacate the vicinity.”

“You’re a fucking sociopath,” Gladio snarled — and there was some of the anger he expected. But not nearly enough of it. “You cold-hearted, unfeeling, insensitive, soulless—”

He couldn’t bear it. All these words had been turned on him as barbs since he arrived to Insomnia, withdrawn and shy. But to hear Gladio turn them on him now, however deserving of the slew of insults, hurt him more than he could withstand. He interrupted before he could add another: “shall you recite the entire thesaurus, Gladiolus?”

The retreating footsteps were soft, nowhere needed the stomps he wished they were. Even the door, as it closed and caught the latch, was unbearably gentle. 

He hadn’t angered him. He’d hurt him. 

Ignis dropped his pen, not caring if the ink soiled his papers. He dropped his head into his hands and allowed himself to cry. As long as his sobs were silent — unheard and unwitnessed — he would permit himself this moment. 

But tomorrow he would compartmentalise — shut away his feelings for Gladiolus, the bliss of their last half-year together, into a box and bury it beneath his duty. 

It was the fault of his own actions entirely that had led to this. He was simply not entitled to be upset about the consequences. 

  


All but overnight, the harmless charmer he had come to ~~lo~~ care for disappeared. In its place was Gladio: shameless flirt, promiscuous ladies’ man. He gave his body out to anyone who asked, as if it was worthless to him. 

It wounded Ignis to know it was he who had destroyed the very man he had sought to possess. He had known that ripping them free of their ill-advised entanglement would shred their companionship, their friendship, and their working relationship. But he had, too, destroyed that bit of goodness in the man he held so dear to him. His self-worth. 

Ignis inflicted himself with a suitable — if directly contrary to Gladio’s — punishment. He would confine himself to celibacy. He had allowed himself to stray from his devotion to his duty toward the prince and the Crown once, and he would not allow a dalliance again. (And he would forever endure in the knowledge that the only person to have touched him with mutual affection, and lust, was a Gladiolus Amicitia whom he had destroyed.)

His new indifference labelled him as even more unfeeling as he had previously been known, but he had to wonder how much was spread directly by the injured party.

Their working relationship slowly recovered. And — once they were all cohabitating the same seven rooms in the Citadel — a friendship began anew. They were as unlike as they had been then. 

Gladiolus was as ruthless a lothario, as he was a protector of Noctis. All that could be spared from his dedication to his duty, or his fondness of his little sister, was spent in the pursuit of someone new to let him warm their bed. (Ignis had never gotten to meet Iris. It was bittersweet when he finally did, but as Noct’s unpleasantly fastidious Chamberlain — instead of her brother’s beloved, as he could have been but for his own mistakes.)

Ignis taught himself more tolerance towards their mutual charge. Learned when a lecture was necessary, or when advice might be best served alongside a fumbling attempt at an almost-remembered Tennebraen tart. Relaxed the reins ever so slightly on his adherence to protocol in every aspect of his life. Learned to cook and to care. 

Gladiolus and Igs may never exist as they had, young sweethearts blind to each other and anything else that wasn’t their togetherness. But Gladio and Iggy, friends and coworkers with affection and camaraderie. 

Ignis would force himself to be content. 

He had no other option left to him. 


End file.
